Trump threatens legal action against JPMorgan in ongoing ‘debanking’ saga

US President Donald Trump has threatened to sue JPMorgan Chase, the latest in an ongoing rift with banks that members of the first family say forced them into crypto.

Writing on his social media platform Saturday, President Trump took aim at a Wall Street Journal story that reported JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon saying he had been offered the role of Federal Reserve chairman.

“This statement is totally untrue, there was never such an offer and, in fact, I’ll be suing JPMorgan Chase over the next two weeks for incorrectly and inappropriately DEBANKING me after the January 6th Protest, a protest that turned out to be correct for those doing the protesting — The Election was RIGGED,” the post read.

President Trump and his sons have pushed further into the world of crypto after claiming some of America’s biggest banks cut them off from banking services. The Trump family has released a number of digital asset products, and most recently, Trump-backed decentralised finance platform World Liberty Financial this month applied for a banking licence.

Debanking row

President Trump last year claimed that JPMorgan Chase cut him off as a customer before Bank of America also denied him services.

His son, Donald Trump Jr., said his family had no choice but to get into digital assets after banks refused to give them services following the 2021 United States Capitol attack.

“We got into crypto because we were debanked,” he said in a Fox News interview last year. “We had to come up with solutions,” he continued, adding that crypto was the most efficient way to go and “absolutely the future of banking.”

Eric Trump blasted Capital One for being “woke” and said the Trump Organization would sue the ban for denying it services.

JPMorgan has in the past denied debanking customers. The bank did not immediately respond to questions from DL News.

Crypto to the rescue?

Trump’s Saturday threat comes as the president and his family try to take over TradFi services using crypto.

Trump-backed World Liberty Financial, a borrowing and lending platform that runs on Ethereum, has its own stablecoin, USD1, and wants the digital token to be used by institutions and everyday people for payments, Zak Folkman, co-founder and COO at World Liberty Financial, told DL News earlier this month.

In a bid to make the stablecoin succeed, World Liberty Financial applied for a banking licence, joining other top crypto companies in a move traditional lenders have criticised.

World Liberty Financial says on its website that it wants to “unlock financial access for all by replacing the limits of traditional banking.”

War with the Fed

President Trump’s war with JPMorgan comes as the Republican fights with the US central bank.

The Justice Department this month hit the Federal Reserve with grand jury subpoenas and is threatening a criminal indictment against its chief, Jerome Powell.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon this week criticised the Justice Department’s actions and said that attacks on the Fed could undermine its independence.

Since President Trump became US leader again last year, he has repeatedly attacked Powell, urging him to lower interest rates.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at [email protected].